I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with much at all of what Robert Kaplan– just one of a long string of western male writers who trail around the world imagining themselves to be Joseph Conrad– has written in the past. So imagine my surprise today when I read this piece in the WaPo in which Kaplan seems to have come round almost completely to the view of the world I’ve been articulating for many years now.
It includes these important truths:
- Physical security remains the primary human freedom. And so the fact that a state is despotic does not necessarily make it immoral. That is the essential fact of the Middle East that those intent on enforcing democracy abroad forget.
For the average person who just wants to walk the streets without being brutalized or blown up by criminal gangs, a despotic state that can protect him is more moral and far more useful than a democratic one that cannot.
Also this:
- The lesson to take away is that where it involves other despotic regimes in the region — none of which is nearly as despotic as [Saddam] Hussein’s — the last thing we should do is actively precipitate their demise. The more organically they evolve and dissolve, the less likely it is that blood will flow. That goes especially for Syria and Pakistan, both of which could be Muslim Yugoslavias in the making, with regionally based ethnic groups that have a history of dislike for each other. The neoconservative yearning to topple Bashar al-Assad, and the liberal one to undermine Pervez Musharraf, are equally adventurous.
Kaplan was an eager supporter of the decision to topple Saddam. Now, he seems to be hedging his bets– or would you say this paragraph qualifies almost as a mea-culpa?
- In the case of Iraq, the state under Saddam Hussein was so cruel and oppressive it bore little relationship to all these other dictatorships. Because under Hussein anybody could and in fact did disappear in the middle of the night and was tortured in the most horrific manner, the Baathist state constituted a form of anarchy masquerading as tyranny. The decision to remove him was defensible, while not providential. [Meaning– what??] The portrait of Iraq that has emerged since his fall reveals him as the Hobbesian nemesis who may have kept in check an even greater anarchy than the kind that obtained under his rule.
No, I don’t think it’s a mea culpa. But still it’s great to see someone who has been such an inspiring figure for the architects of various US military adventures since the early 1990s suddenly starting to urge caution.
(Hat-tip to spouse for telling me I should read that. It was interesting to see that George Will had a piece urging US caution re Iraq on the same op-ed page… Those two, and Frank Fukuyama: quite interesting how the debacle in Iraq is starting to fragment the previously existing bloc of US militarists of both left and right.)
As the left so often has reminded all of us, the reasons for the US invasion of Iraq had less to do with domestic policy than with Saddam Hussein’s foreign policy. Multiple invasions, WMD’s (or not), missiles, terrorism, and so on — maybe even the attempted assassination of Bush Senior. All of these things are primarily of an international rather than a domestic flavor. Also, that “Oil” thing. It’s of more importance internationally than in domestic Iraqi politics. Kaplan isn’t wrong but he isn’t relevant.
The invasion of Iraq wasn’t (mainly) to spread the light of democracy to the benighted and oppresssed Iraqi people — do you think Kaplan forgot?
Caveat: If the government of Saddam Hussein were a blissful democracy like Iceland then the invasion would have been politically impossible from a Western or US perspective. The tyranny made the invasion possible. But that’s it.
Very interesting turnabout for Kaplan. As more in his same flock turn course, it will be intriguing to see how relations with the PA under Hamas evolve. Still many of the same old hysteria birds continue flying in circles.
Who are these liberals yearning to undermine Pervez Musharraf?
I know many a liberal who thinks we should not be so cozy with such a government. But I know none who think US policy should be actively to undermine the Pakistani government.
Note also he refers to necons wanting to “topple” and liberals wanting to “undermine.” Despite the different verbs, Kaplan’s claim that left and right are “equally adventurous” is hard to sqaure with reality.
the neo cons have totally failed in their attempts to move on. they are simply idiots through and through. I heard Alan Dershowitz on NPR the other day talking about his new “pre-emtion” book which apparantly isn’t advocating pre-emtion simply lsomehow discussing it and not doing it or something. Basically he got in every stupid neo con point he wanterd but said we should discuss them before we act on them. dick!
Alan Dershowitz is not a “neocon.”
“Hussein anybody could and in fact did disappear in the middle of the night and was tortured in the most horrific manner,”
So speak now, I think there is no much differences in this case that we can urge, still many Iraqis killed Tortured some of them taken from homes later found dead body on the streets, the only differenc you can say that Hussein never give back dead bodies to their families, just in a few cases with orders should be very quite.
BTW, there was orders to all Iraq hospitals any dead body come for autopsy should not opened the paper should singed by the Iraqi officials whatever the US/UK side put in the reports about the cause of death!!!1
Alan Dershowitz is not a “neocon.”
Are you sure? Because ‘Dershowitz’ is an awfully “neocon”-sounding surname.
Alan Dershowitz is not a “neocon.”
Some people just need a straw man against whom they can vent their rage. There’s another good example in a previous post, where we are told that Etzel:
the infamous militant (“terrorist”) Zionist group…incubated …the whole of the Likud Party.
Just to put things into their correct historical perspective, the Likud was created in 1973 by the merger of the Free Center and Independent Liberal parties with Gahal which, in turn, grew out of a merger between the Liberal Party and Herut. Only Herut was a direct offshoot of Etzel (and Lehi), and while Gahal and Likud adopted elements of Etzel ideology, the strong liberal elements were more concerned with free enterprise and individual rights that with Israel “on both banks of the Jordan”.
While it is true that Menahem Begin had been commander of Etzel, and Yitzhak Shamir commander of Lehi, many of the other founders of Likud had nothing to do with these groups. Ezer Weizman came squarely out of the Liberal camp and eventually joined the Labour Party. Ariel Sharon – who Hanan Kristal describes as “the last Mapainik” (after Ben-Gurion’s Labour party) – was in the Palmah, not Etzel or Lehi, and not from a revisionist background at all. And then, of course, there were many mizrahi Jews who have joined Likud over the years who really have no background with Etzel or revisionist Zionist politics. Good examples are Meir Seetrit, Silvan Shalom, and President Moshe Katzav.
Of course it make things much easier if you can identify a terrorist organization of the past and then assert that this morphed into a political party of the present, bringing with it all of its evils and thereby delegitimating anything that the party or its members do or stand for. But of course the accusation is about as accurate as saying that the 20th century Democratic Party in the US was “incubated” by the Klu Klux Klan.
But then what do you expect from someone who probably can’t even find her way from Shuk Bezalel to Kerem Ha-Teymanim?
One thing to remember about Kaplan is that he’s consistently argued that democracy is not a viable goal for US (or any imperial) foreign policy. His prescription for Iraq was that the US install an authoritarian regime — possibly another Baathist, another Saddam but on a tighter leash. Allawi would have suited Kaplan fine had it worked, but by the time the US brought Allawi in it was already too late. The US lost the re-use Saddam’s systems of control — the “decapitation” option — when Bremer dissolved the Iraq army, or you can go further back to the decision to short-staff the invasion force. This meant that the US depended on the Kurds and Shiites to stabilize Iraq after the invasion, and the price of their participation was de-Baathification. Bush also tied his shoelaces together with his liberation/democracy spiel — while the US actually did very little very slowly to promote democracy (the two-thirds rule is an especially clever poison pill) the idea is still a dangling sword over the head of the occupation.
Kaplan’s books are very readable and quite useful, except when he starts “thinking”. Even then his “pragmatism” is rigorous and consistent — to the point that he insists that imperialism needs a “pagan ethos”. His big problem is that his ideals and preferred practices are rooted in some other century. That strikes me as a fatal debilitation in a “pragmatist.”
On the other hand, recent news does make the rather sobering case that bad as Saddam was, removing him has led to worse. One thing we need to give some serious consideration to is how it might be possible to ameliorate conditions under Saddam-like dictators without plunging entire countries into the hell of war. As far as I can tell, since 1991 all the US ever did viz. Iraq, and for purely domestic political reasons of the basest sort, was try to make conditions there worse.
By the way, has anyone noticed that in Saddam’s show trial, he’s being charged with ordering fewer executions than Bush signed off on while governor of Texas?
JES-
You betray a poor understanding of American politics, since the Democratic Party predates the KKK as opposed to the Likud which post-dates Etzel and Lehi. One wonders how could an American party formed in the early 19th century possibly have inherited the baggage of a venemous organization formed decades later.
On the other hand it makes perfect sense that Likud, including many individuals who did not carry membership cards from the equally venemous Etzel and Lehi, felt little compunction about wedding themselves to the likes of Begin and Shamir. Are we to think less of dear grandfatherly Sharon lying on his death-bed who staged Begin/Shamir-like raids across the Jordan river in the early 1950s (I know the Israeli-American MM does its best to create these lesser thoughts in the minds of Americans and Israelis) or perhaps consider Bibi who now proudly carries the mantle of Likud?
Exactly where did you get your education JES? The University of little minds?
And Vadim:
N. Finkelstien, Israel S., N. Klein, Bob D., EB, AE, MB … should I go on? Do these names qualify as neo-cons? Are you too from the University of little minds? This kind of analysis is exactly what lies miles below the discussion on this website.
Tom Hull: Also consider that Bush’s victims had not attempted the assassination of a head of state, which is likely the case for at least some victims of Saddam at Dujail. Of course this makes no excuse for Saddam’s actions, the acts of a true megalomaniac sadist tyrannt. However, given the international pressures on Iraqi domestic politics for decades, including various neighboring states funding and financing Kurdish and Shi’a groups to destablize the Iraqi state, there is by comparison no excuse for George W. as he ordered executions while sitting in the plush Governor’s mansion in Austin, Texas.
I agree that Kaplan is better before he starts thinking. I liked his stuff in the atlantic about Xinjain and mongolia, topics that are hard to find info about. but I wasn’t that into “the coming anarchy” I agree with Thomas PM Barnett that just because he witnessed stuff happening with the economy and climate in Africa doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in the rest of the world.
and dershowitz is kind of a neo con. I don’t think fukayama is jewish. and dershowitz’s rhetoric was neo conservative, at least in spirit.
Iraq would have been a disaster even if everything had been done perfctly. if there had been more troops there would have been more dead. a strong coalition would have been more nationalities of dead. It was a bad idea horribly carried out.
2006-03-03 Rhetoric of Unreality
Sd,
You betray your very poor reading skills and extremely poor logic. That’s why I qualified it as the the “20th century Democratic Party”. I actually know quite a bit about US politics (and, it seems, quite a bit more about Israeli political history than do you.)
The fact that the Democratic Party has roots going back to before the Civil War says very little about that party – especially its Southern representatives – during most of the late 19th and early 20th Century. The Klu Klux Klan had a lot of influence in shaping the post-reconstruction Democratic Party in the South. BTW, some of this has, apparently, come right down to us to this day. Just look at Robert Byrd who was a “Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops” in that organization.
At any rate, Sd, if you could read you would understand that I was pointing out the fallacy in the Etzel-Likud argument, not that the Democratic Party is an offshoot of the KKK. But your personal attacks and generalizations based on limited knowledge and faulty comprehension are exactly the issue.
“the US actually did very little very slowly to promote democracy”
Of course they did “very little”, and they also made the reason clear when Bremer came in, cancelled scheduled local elections and overturned the results of any democratic processes that had already taken place. They stated in so many words that it was “too early” to allow elections at any level, because, as one military commander put it in so many words in 2003, the leaders Iraqis would choose would not be compatible with U.S. interests.
JES,
Of course it make things much easier if you can identify a terrorist organization of the past
Yes JES, like KAHANA, and others inside Israel who believes to kill and push all Arab from Promise Land.
Tom Hull,
Saddam’s show trial, he’s being charged with ordering fewer executions than Bush signed off on while governor of Texas?
Tom Hull, there is no point to urge that Saddam was a bad and stupid who destroyed a complete state by his stupidity.
Having said that there were more like Saddam around the world the question is why this governor of Texas chose him?
There were an article wrote by Arabic writer in one of the Arabic newspaper before the invasion, he write in the end of that article that “The Photo of Bush The Father and Bush The Son Both Will Be on The Ground of Sheraton -Baghdad Hotel”,
This is what The Iraq will do to the governor of Texas who is misleading the Iraqis, with his democracy that born dead in Iraq, put the Iraqis on suffering and the State of Iraq destroyed.
imagine my surprise today when I read this piece in the WaPo in which Kaplan seems to have come round almost completely to the view of the world I’ve been articulating for many years now.
Helena, did you remember when I first post in your site what I said?
As I remember that those expertises “as you and other call them” make the human disasters to write with pride some conclusions from the suffering of those people.
As your surprise about what this “expert” write and found out that “the most moderate and enlightened states in the Middle East in recent decades have tended to be those ruled by royal families whose longevity has conferred legitimacy:”
What a big discovery!!! Ohhhhh……..so smart this guy Kaplan, we all knew those “royal families” brought to the power by Britt’s or France and then supported and protected by US/UK. This fact every single Arab on the street go and asked them from Morocco to UAE all those Arab in 22 courtiers will tell you the truth that this Kaplan “the expert” discovered after 100 years with give them a new “moderate and enlightened”!!!!!
I saw few Americans before the invasion my surprise all of them believes that Iraqis will through followers on the American solders, this is the impression each American I met. It’s looking that American so blind and they did not read the history.
Yes Salah. That’s why Kahane and his followers were banned from participating in elections.
The Price of The Democracy That Born Dead In Iraq
Ex-Official: Iraq Abuses Growing Worse
By ED JOHNSON Associated Press Writer
Domocracy Under Carpet Bombing
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=279472&sid=WOR
slah- kaplan isn’t smart and neither are you and I doubt helena cares about your horrible posts.
lester1/2jr, who tells you to tell me you’re stupid, lies.
You are so blind and duff that the post highlighted the real reports and the truth about all the lies and propaganda that spreads that don’t like to hear.
salah- sorry
JES-
Don’t get defensive, these are not “personal attacks,” as you say. Rather these are essential corrections for JWN readers who may be fooled by your tendency of illogical analysis.
I read fine, and I caught your reference to the Dems in the 20th century. So what?
The point is that the Democratic party in the 21st c. or the 20th c. or the 19th c. represents a vast political organization that predates the KKK. (I see you agree with this point.) Thus (logically) this vast political organization that extended across regional lines in the US (north-south, east-west) can not reasonably be linked to a smaller reactionary, venomous hate organization like the KKK whose membership base was in America’s southeatern states. (And again … I see you agree with this larger primary point.)
It is here, however, that you pull a switch in your latest post. You agree to the “larger primary point” above, and yet in this latest post you say:
“The fact that the Democratic Party has roots going back to before the Civil War says very little about that party – especially its Southern representatives – during most of the late 19th and early 20th Century. The Klu Klux Klan had a lot of influence in shaping the post-reconstruction Democratic Party in the South.” BTW, some of this has, apparently, come right down to us to this day. Just look at Robert Byrd who was a “Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops” in that organization.”
Let’s break this illogical string of exceptions and qualifiers down.
You write: “especially its Southern representatives”: and what are we to think about the Democratic party’s mid-western, western, southwestern, and northern representatives? Are they now excluded from the larger Democratic party in order for you to (in)complete your illogical analysis?
Then you write: “during most of the late 19th and early 20th Century.” Ah Haaah! Now the reader sees the little game you play. Between your first post and this latest post, you switch time-frames! Now it is not the Democratic party in the whole of the 20th c, but only this period in the late 19th c and early 20th c. And this is supposed to make what point? Are we now to believe that the regional wing of the Democratic party in the south-eastern United States during the narrow time frame of the late 19th and early 20th c claiming membership to a post-civil war hate organization can stand in for the entire Democratic party? No, of course not. That would not be your point, because you already agree with the original “larger primary point” above.
Then comes the real winner, denoted like an internet-pro “BTW,” coming “right down to us to this day,” (oh gosh, we can hardly wait for this one, JES; it promises to be the real kicker…bated breath…bated breath…). Robert Byrd!!!!!! Oh no! Not Robert Byrd!!! EeeeeGads, run for hills……every paranoid’s worst fears confirmed, Robert Byrd……run for the hills!
Wow, JES, I owe you an apology …(irony alert) … you sure know “quite a bit” about US politics, and quite “a bit” more than me about Israeli political history!
JES, exactly how old are you?
Were you that kid-genius in Tel Aviv who read every book you could get your hands on? And now you are what…19 … 20?
And you still replay every Spielberg movie on your home entertainment system, and prefer reading your Superman comic books along with those glowing Zionist tributes to Bibi’s martyred brother? Do you also accept every petty conspiracy theory you can get your hands on? Beware Robert Byrd! Beware the “peace offensive” against the lovers of Zion!!!! Reality is the Matix!
JES, I suggest something for your own health: every day you need to go for a long walk, maybe get some fresh sea-air beside the Mediterranean. Take a towel to the beach, and let the sunshine enter all those dank areas of your darkly shadowed mind.
Your reference to one lone loose wing-nut in the US Senate does zero to change the fact that the 20th c Dem party (your original time-frame, not mine) was led by men like FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and most recently Bill Clinton. (By the way, JES, just to give you an update, you should know that the likes of former KKKers such as your reference to Byrd … they are now largely found in the current southern membership of America’s Grand Ol’ Party, not the Democrats.) Think hard JES! … What is more logical: that the activities of men like FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and most recently Bill Clinton could be linked to the activities of the KKK during the American post-Civil War reconstruction period, or that the activities of Begin, Shamir, Sharon, and Bibi can be linked to the earlier activities of Etzel and Lehi?
Let me restate my original point: you should not justify the venomous nature of the Likud party’s current (or recent) group of hate politicians by making false historical references to American party politics. This logical point stands: it makes little or no sense to link the 20th c. Dem party in the US to the KKK (the “larger primary point” to which you already agree), whereas it makes perfect sense to link Likudniks today to the likes of Shamir and Begin (or Sharon) who played leading roles in some of the worst mid-20th century violent Zionist agression? After all, these are the same individuals who led the Likud into the late 20th (and 21st) c., and Bibi is their direct heir today.
I won’t even respond to your charge about “generalizations.”
I think it has long been clear to careful JWN readers just who engages in generalizations and illogical analysis in the comments section of this website.
Gosh, where is Vadim, when you need some tag-team action?
Well, since unlike JES I’m not an Israeli, I’d say I’m unqualified to add anything at all to his analysis, which struck me as well-informed and cogent. As for you I hope whatever it is that’s troubling you works out for the better. Living with such deep anger as you show here is very corrosive to both your psyche and your physical body.
Ooohhmmm Mani Pedme Hung
Vadim, I am an instructor in transcendental meditation and the ancient arts of Tai Chi
Learn to transform rival energy through non-agressive actions
Life is a truth quest, a search for the way clear of those who build barriers and obstructions
Peace!
look for the humor, Vadim
just like JES needs sun light
Buddha smiles
Well, since unlike JES I’m not an Israeli,
It’s clear you are more Israeli than Israelis themselves Vadim.
You don’t need to tell us it’s very clear from your posts.
Your site is very very cool !! I love it 🙂 Respect !